Octavo 164 pp "Timothy Connor and his mates--some seventy thousand Yankee privateers--leveled a remarkable weight of destruction on British shipping during the American Revolution. Unlike the enfeebled Continental Navy, these common seamen were, in Thomas Jefferson's words, " a national blessing". Connor's ship, the Rising States, was eventually captured at sea by the British H. M. S. Terrible in April 1777. Transported to Forton Prison, Portsmouth, Connor remained a "dam'd Rebel" prisoner for two years. During that time he kept a book of some fifty-six songs he heard or read."